a genesis dream

  • last night i dreamt that i was watching a live performance of tonight tonight tonight, and mike sang a couple of lines. that would have made more sense in a song where mike wrote the lyrics at least, such as follow you, follow me or throwing it all away. but we all know that dreams have no logic.



    have you ever dreamt of genesis?

  • Yes, quite a few times over the years, and always the same kind of thing, involving (like yours) being at a live performance. It's always the Collins-fronted line-up, and always in a weird outdoor setting, often involving my having difficulty getting into a decent spot. There's often trees in the way of the stage, and in one dream it was both this and the fact they were playing in what looked like a mostly demolished building and I was on top of a high hill looking almost vertically down on it (through those pesky trees). I can never recall any specific tracks though.

    Abandon all reason

  • Dreams I can recall having years ago -- back in the days of vinyl -- involved my "discovering" non-existent albums. One involved a fictitious Genesis album, and another involved several fictitious Hackett albums. I can't remember many specifics of the "albums," except that the Genesis one looked kind of like ABACAB and began with a 7-minute song called "The Snake," while one of the Hackett ones had an oddly "retro" cover design, as if from the early '60s or so. Another Hackett "album" looked eerily similar, in its actual vinyl, to TILL WE HAVE FACES -- which, at the time, was still (briefly) in the future!

    Little known fact: Before the crowbar was invented...


    ...crows simply drank at home.

  • Not strictly Genesis but at least Phil was part of it: several years ago I dreamt I was in a jam session with a bunch of professional musicians, one of them was Phil Collins on drums. I can't recall the exact lineup, it was wild bunch of musicians from the rock, metal and jazz camps, a good deal of them were nameless but supposed to be very well-known, as it is in dreams sometimes. Besides Phil there was another drummer, then there were at least two singers, a whole lot of guitarists, some bassist, and yours truly on the keyboards. The background story was some rich-ass guy had put all his favourite musicians together in a room in his villa with all their instruments just to let them jam and see what happens. The result was I played some weird intro on the keyboard (lots of wild chord changes, trying so hard to be Mr. Banks) and then the others all joined in. They did no less than create a brand new awesome cool song on the spot, I hardly couldn't add anything, I was just blown away from what I was hearing. Too bad I couldn't recall the song when I woke up :P

  • the Genesis one looked kind of like ABACAB and began with a 7-minute song called "The Snake"

    I love that sort of detail! The only time that's happened to me is on a couple of occasions I dreamed about Radiohead, another favourite band of mine. In each of these dreams they were doing a new song, one was called White Chocolate Hat (which sounds more like it should be by either Prince or REM) and the other was called The Interrogator, and I even recalled a line from it - "I don't care about the money, I don't care about the money."


    An impossibility I know, but I now really want to hear The Snake! Something tells me I'd like it.


    Does 'snake' appear in any Genesis songs other than Supper's Ready and The Lamia? (I don't think it's mentioned in The Serpent is it?).

    Abandon all reason

  • I'm glad this topic was started (and am also a bit surprised it didn't already exist - so kudos to the original poster).


    I had one in advance of the release of "Invisible Touch" all those years ago. I dreamed of it having a different cover, very much in line with the cover of the 7" single (which, no doubt, must have subliminally informed the image in the dream). Also, they released a second album at the same time - in the same way that Bruce Springsteen released ""Human Touch" and "Lucky Town" at the same time. The additional Genesis album had a red and black color scheme - it caught the eye, both from the color combination itself and from the fact that Genesis would use those two specific colors for a cover. I wish I could remember the title - it did have one.


    Maybe I saw Genesis' mythical "Black (and Red) Album"? :/

    Stepping out the back way, hoping nobody sees...

  • An impossibility I know, but I now really want to hear The Snake! Something tells me I'd like it.

    Maybe some musically talented type around here could write it!


    In the dream it was implied that the song had a similar concept to "The Serpent," but was by the Genesis of the early '80s.


    I have had many surprisingly detailed dreams about music, usually involving more or less realistic depictions of various recording media. One recurring dream is that I have large numbers of tapes, records and/or CDs stashed away that I have somehow not managed to listen to yet!

    Little known fact: Before the crowbar was invented...


    ...crows simply drank at home.

    Edited once, last by DecomposingMan ().

  • I had to look him up; I hadn't heard of him before. Was he on the airwaves often in the UK when he was still alive?

    We must have a crossed wire. I was picking up on your jokey reference to dreaming about Genesis's "Black (and Red) Album" which I took to be a reference to Prince's famous 'lost' Black Album, intended as the follow up to Sign O' The Times. As you probably know, he abandoned it but of course it found its way into the public domain anyway. The most infamous track on it was a shockingly un-Prince-like and rather nasty ditty called Bob George (thought by some to be the basis of Prince rejecting his own album as 'evil'). Following your Genesis Black & Red Album comment, I was imagining what their Bob George equivalent might be like!


    There is a sort of connection isn't there. Genesis abandoned a load of new material when recording the follow-up to Duke, thinking they were just repeating themselves. So perhaps there is a 'lost' album lurking somewhere after all!


    Meanwhile, no doubt fuelled by this very thread, I had a Genesis-related dream last night. My partner and I were at some sort of Genesis event, with an audience all sitting at tables. Hackett was sitting at a table with the rest of us while Gabriel was performing a song, bizarrely playing one of those 80s Steinberger type guitars with no machine head, and playing it quite badly it has to be said. To make matters worse, while plunking out an embarrassingly lame solo he made a point of going and standing in front of Hackett as if to say "I can do this too, you know!" Hackett sat there with a slight glower and I murmured to my partner "He's going to grab his guitar and show him how it should be done". Sure enough when he decided he couldn't take any more he leapt up, picked up his 57 Les Paul (stood against the wall and half-hidden behind a cloth) and got going. But the dream either ended there or I can't recall any more of it. Very different from my usual weird-outdoor-gig Genesis dreams... although still weird.

    Abandon all reason

    Edited once, last by Backdrifter ().

  • We must have a crossed wire. I was picking up on your jokey reference to dreaming about Genesis's "Black (and Red) Album" which I took to be a reference to Prince's famous 'lost' Black Album, intended as the follow up to Sign O' The Times. As you probably know, he abandoned it but of course it found its way into the public domain anyway. The most infamous track on it was a shockingly un-Prince-like and rather nasty ditty called Bob George (thought by some to be the basis of Prince rejecting his own album as 'evil'). Following your Genesis Black & Red Album comment, I was imagining what their Bob George equivalent might be like!


    There is a sort of connection isn't there. Genesis abandoned a load of new material when recording the follow-up to Duke, thinking they were just repeating themselves. So perhaps there is a 'lost' album lurking somewhere after all!


    Meanwhile, no doubt fuelled by this very thread, I had a Genesis-related dream last night. My partner and I were at some sort of Genesis event, with an audience all sitting at tables. Hackett was sitting at a table with the rest of us while Gabriel was performing a song, bizarrely playing one of those 80s Steinberger type guitars with no machine head, and playing it quite badly it has to be said. To make matters worse, while plunking out an embarrassingly lame solo he made a point of going and standing in front of Hackett as if to say "I can do this too, you know!" Hackett sat there with a slight glower and I murmured to my partner "He's going to grab his guitar and show him how it should be done". Sure enough when he decided he couldn't take any more he leapt up, picked up his 57 Les Paul (stood against the wall and half-hidden behind a cloth) and got going. But the dream either ended there or I can't recall any more of it. Very different from my usual weird-outdoor-gig Genesis dreams... although still weird.

    Yes, I had to look up "Bob George", and there were two groups of stories that came up: one (larger) group consisted of links for an (allegedly) famous televangelist, and the second (much smaller group) was about the Prince song. I guessed the wrong one! ^^


    Here's a link for those who had no idea about the original reference:


    https://genius.com/Prince-bob-george-lyrics


    Prince's "Black Album" did very briefly get an official release here in the US in 1994 - I remember the Best Buy stores here being chock full of copies of it. Since they started and were (and still are) based in Minnesota (just like Target), I think Prince arranged an exclusive distribution deal with them.


    My reference was to a "Black Album" that many acts were rumored to have over the years (e.g., The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Prince, Metallica, etc. - of course, the latter two did have such albums). I had no idea that Prince's had a song called "Bob George" on his - thus, my confusion.


    I like your guitar duel dream! ^^

    Stepping out the back way, hoping nobody sees...

  • A few nights ago I dreamt I was at a party in someone's garden. Over in one corner sat an old tired looking Phil Collins. No-one was talking to him so I went over and we had a pleasant chat although he was laughing and being quite blokey in a boozed-up sort of way. At this point, I noticed his left arm appeared to be made of clear glass or plastic.


    Odd though that was, it was more agreeable than the one I had last night, in which I was on a train where a gunman was roaming around and shooting people. When he got to me he paused and asked "Where is the museum of antiquities?" then shot me in the right foot and left arm. I was still clutching at my arm when I woke up. (Perhaps if the dream had continued I'd have needed a plastic left arm...)

    Abandon all reason

  • For the first time in ages I had a Genesis dream last night, very much in the mould of those I've often had as I mentioned above concerning live shows and trees. Sure enough I was at a gig in what seemed to be a woodland setting, the stage set up in a clearing and ridiculously low down, more or less at ground level. It was before the show started and there were very few people around so I decided to wait right by the stage to ensure I got a decent view.

    Abandon all reason

  • I had my first Genesis dream last night where I actually see members of the band.


    In the one previous dream I had, and this was back when I was in my late teens...

    I was standing in line to get tickets for a Steve Hackett concert. The line extended into an alley where I was standing and I noticed somebody had spraypainted on a brick wall "Genesis are priests" (an obvious reference to the famous "Clapton is God" graffiti) except the word priests was mispelled as "prests."


    Strangely enough, in the dream I had last night...

    Tony, Phil and Mike were rehearsing in the back corner of a church.

    I was standing at the end of a pew, watching them. There were just a few other spectators standing there with me.

    The band seemed focused that moment on fine-tuning the sound of the keyboards, so Tony began to play an unaccompanied version of "One For The Vine" .

    As I was standing there listening, I was awestruck not only by the sound of the keyboards (which had a distinctive late 70s sound) but how great it sounded in that church.

  • Weirdly, I had a dream about them too the other night. An awards ceremony like the Hall of Fame (except it was all a little surreal in that usual dream fashion) and I was introduced to the band as a fan, but suddenly Phil decided they had a gift for me - which was to sing the opening lines of In The Cage at the show. Absolutely froze when my time came, at which point I said I could step back and do the drums. And then it felt like my arms belonged to someone else. A rapid retreat followed.


    There is bound to be some psychological insight into this one.

  • Last night I had a dream I was in a street in some unspecified US city near a big arena where Genesis were going to play. I was chatting with Tony Banks about it, he was remembering it was a venue they played very early in their US career and they were surprised to get such a good crowd in such a big arena seeing as they weren't well-known there yet. But his theory was, it was a Friday gig. "It's the end of the working week, people want to go out and have a good time, so they happily pile on down the local venue and don't care who's playing, they just want to enjoy themselves so you've got a great audience right there."


    I then asked him about the current tour and how much he was enjoying it. He looked thoughtful but before he could give his considered answer, I woke up. I was a bit miffed as I wanted to hear his response. But had to make do with lying there in the dark, listening to the wind and rain lashing the bedroom window.

    Abandon all reason